Lucy - 05 - Stalked

by Allison Brennan

  Except not everyone. Lucy began to take notes. Fast. Everything came together quickly in her head, pulling together what Sean had learned from Charlie Mead and what Suzanne had found in Kip Todd’s apartment.

  “Lucy?” Sean asked.

  She glanced up. Everyone was looking at her. How long had she been focused on the scrapbooks?

  She smiled sheepishly and said, “I don’t have all the answers, and won’t until I talk to Kip or Alexis, but I know why they targeted Peter.”

  Joe raised an eyebrow. “You got me. I can see that they were targeting him, but how can you tell motive?”

  “Fifteen years ago, Kip Todd identified with Peter. If you look at the notations in the first scrapbook, he considers himself almost a brother to Peter. They both lost their beloved older sister. They both suffered. There was no hatred of Peter or the McMahons initially. In fact, I suspect that for a while the Todd family believed that whoever killed Rachel had killed Camille, only Camille’s body hadn’t been found.

  “A year later, Camille’s body is found. It’s old news, not generating a lot of press. But the one-year anniversary of Rachel McMahon’s murder is suddenly big news. A weeklong series of articles, rehashing the swingers’ lifestyle, the investigation, the trial—where was the justice for Camille? It’s like no one cared what happened to her.”

  “How old were Kip and Alexis?” Suzanne asked.

  “Eleven and seventeen when she disappeared. There are some holes in the articles. For example, we don’t really know the circumstances of her kidnapping other than that she went to a public restroom at a public park and didn’t come back. Was she with her family? Her brother? Her sister? Guilt is a powerful and deadly motivator.”

  DeLucca said, “I read the police reports. Cops interviewed every sex offender in a twenty-mile radius, everyone at the park that day.”

  “And I have the FBI file. It’s even thinner,” Suzanne said. “No suspects. No substantive profile.”

  “Who wrote it? Tony or Hans? They were both profiling back then, and both worked on the Rachel McMahon case.”

  Suzanne looked. “Hans Vigo. But not until after her body was found. He wrote that the suspect was a pedophile who lived alone in a remote area. Manual labor, farming, or heavy machinery by trade. Worked alone, kept to himself, nondescript. Wouldn’t arouse suspicion. He likely had a dog and used the animal to lure his victims into a place where they could easily be taken. He would be of small stature but deceptively strong.”

  Noah added, “He kept Camille until she started her menstrual cycle, then killed her.”

  “There was a note added to the file two years ago,” Suzanne said.

  “From Hans?”

  “No, it’s an administrative note. Five years ago in Pennsylvania, a forty-nine-year-old man was shot and killed by police after the failed abduction of a ten-year-old girl. The note said that profilers deemed the suspect had a sixty-five percent chance of being Camille Todd’s killer. He’d been living in the neighboring town up until a year after Camille’s body had been found.”

  “How many victims were attributed to him?”

  “Confirmed two—bodies found on his property. Looking through unsolved cases, the BSU determined that five others were definitely his handiwork. Those families were notified. But there were seven victims who were likely but unconfirmed. Their families were not notified.”

  Lucy said, “So the Todds never had closure. The parents divorced before Camille was abducted. Then Camille goes missing and they have no idea what happened to her. They had hope when Rachel went missing that the police would find her because they had to be connected—same age, same general area—but Rachel’s case turned into a media blitz, and when her case was solved everyone forgot about Camille.”

  Joe took issue with that. “No one forgot. I’m a cop; I’ve never forgotten a missing kid. I look at their pictures every damn day.”

  Lucy said, “I’m trying to get into how the Todds felt. How Kip and Alexis turned their confusion and grief into a conspiracy to murder.”

  “What you’re saying,” Sean interjected, “is that they felt Camille was forgotten because Rachel’s case got all the attention.”

  Lucy nodded, then continued, “Look at this second scrapbook. It wasn’t until after the autopsy that the record keeping became messy. When Kip originally started, he felt a kinship to Peter, until he found out that Camille had been alive the whole time. While Rachel was already dead, all the police and FBI were focused on finding her, not Camille. It doesn’t matter that there was more evidence and more witnesses to Rachel McMahon’s murder; they’re looking at the investigation from the outside.

  “Dominic Theissen was the public face of the FBI. He’s the one who verbalized the seventy-two-hour window. The Todds think that the police gave up after seventy-two hours and presumed she was dead.”

  Joe said, “In the police reports, it looks like they felt she might have drowned. The creek was running high and kids playing close to the banks have slipped and fallen in the past, washing to shore miles downstream.”

  Lucy nodded. “With Rachel, everything appeared to have been done right, and with Camille, everything appeared to have been done wrong—from the Todds’ perspective. Officer Stokes, who later became a detective, had been the responding officer to both crime scenes. Theissen spoke for the FBI. Tony Presidio was the FBI case agent—because initially, they believed the cases were connected. But Tony stayed with the McMahon case all the way through. Camille became a cold case, passed on to another agent when Tony moved to D.C.”

  “That doesn’t explain Hans,” Noah said.

  “He wrote the profile.”

  “How would they get that report?” Joe asked.

  Noah responded, “Not difficult. It’s not a classified file. Alexis Sanchez may have accessed it from Quantico.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It would have been in Tony’s files,” Lucy said. “I think that’s why she wanted the McMahon file—for the newspaper articles that talked about Camille’s kidnapping. She didn’t want Tony or me to make a connection to either her or Kip, now that the FBI had interviewed him.”

  Suzanne said, “If Tony had connected Rosemary Weber’s murder to McMahon, he may have seen the Todd name in the files, and traced Kip Todd back to Camille. Kip wasn’t hiding.”

  “But Alexis was, using her married name, lying about her marital status.”

  “But why now?” Joe asked. “It’s been fifteen years.”

  “It started ten years ago,” Sean said. “Two things happened. Peter moved back to New Jersey, and Rosemary Weber published Sex, Lies, and Family Secrets. Peter was harassed in high school.” He pulled out his laptop and showed the group files he’d downloaded. “Kip Todd was a junior when Peter was a freshman. Same high school. But Kip, who has a degree—not in literature like he told you but computer engineering—hacked into the school system and deleted all his files. When Patrick was in Newark he grabbed a physical copy of the yearbook. And there’s Kip. It’s the only record that he went to the school—if you call them and ask, there are no computerized files. And Patrick followed up—all physical copies were destroyed after they were digitized.”

  “When did he do it?” Lucy asked.

  “When Peter was in Syracuse,” Sean said. “At least, that’s my educated guess.”

  Lucy suspected that Sean knew for certain but that he hadn’t found the information through legitimate channels. She worried that someday his hacking skills were going to get him in trouble, but she had to admit that they often came in handy.

  Lucy said, “They lost track of him when he ran away. Kip graduated from high school. Peter got his GED, then he went to college a year early. Kip would have been in college at the same time, and since Peter hadn’t legally changed his name or hid his identity, he was easy to find.”

  “And Alexis got close to him? To psychologically torture him?” Suzanne shook her head. “They’re sick.”

  “The
y’re methodical sociopaths.”

  “What I don’t get is how Alexis beat the FBI background check,” Joe said. “Don’t you guys run your new agents through a vigorous system?”

  “Yes,” Noah said, “but she didn’t lie about anything. Just because her sister was murdered doesn’t disqualify her from being an agent. When she interviewed, she lived in Denver, she was married, she had a daughter. All that was true. When she and her husband split, she amended her file. It’s all there, in her file, but unless you know what to look for, it’s not going to raise any concerns.”

  “Why go through all that trouble to become an FBI agent if you’re only going to leave in the middle of training?”

  “My guess?” Sean said. “They wanted information they couldn’t get without being an insider. Either on their sister’s murder investigation, or maybe they believed after Peter disappeared from Syracuse that the FBI knew where he was.”

  Noah concurred and added, “Also, I don’t think Alexis planned on killing Tony so soon after killing Weber. But when Tony himself went to New York, she panicked and poisoned his Scotch.”

  “Do we have a confirmation from the lab that his Scotch was definitely poisoned?” Lucy asked.

  Noah shook his head. “We’re waiting on more tox reports. Right now, an ERT unit is combing through her dorm room looking for trace evidence. If she’s guilty, we’ll find it.”

  “Why kill Rosemary now?” Lucy mused out loud.

  “Because,” Joe said, “Rosemary was looking into the Theissen subway accident. The day before she was killed, she requested the autopsy report, the police report, and all security footage. Maybe Todd thought she’d see something that would nail him. Though we can’t confirm from the security tapes that Todd was the person who tripped Theissen, he fits the general description.”

  “Theissen’s death set the chain of events into motion,” Suzanne said. “They’d quietly taken out Theissen. They may or may not have poisoned Bob Stokes. Kip Todd is keeping an eye on Rosemary—maybe he got the internship to see if she had information about Peter. Or maybe just to get close to her before he killed her, like Alexis got close to Peter.”

  Noah asked, “Did they conspire to kill Theissen? Or was that the brother acting alone?”

  “They had to be working together,” Sean said.

  “Why?”

  “The only way Alexis could have known Tony was working with Suzanne was if her brother tipped her off.”

  Suzanne said, “They’re both looking very guilty.”

  Lucy considered the facts they knew and all the conjecture and speculation. “I’m having a hard time figuring out which one of the siblings is dominant. Traditionally, it’s the male partner, but he was much younger when Camille was kidnapped. How his mother and his older sister responded to their grief would have a huge impact on him. He may have put himself into the protective role, that he needed to look out for them because he couldn’t protect Camille. Yet, Alexis went into the lion’s den—she was one of us. She ate with us, studied with us, lived with us. She kept up the act at all times. That shows an intense and controlled personality, capable of extreme emotional restraint.”

  “I’ve looked at this security footage a dozen times,” Joe said, “and she wasn’t trying to kill Peter. I think she wanted to disable Sean.”

  Sean concurred. “She wanted Peter to go with her. When I wouldn’t let him, she shot at me.”

  “She could be fixated on him,” Suzanne said.

  “If Peter isn’t a target, why was he stalked for so many years? In high school and college? Why did Alexis pretend to be someone else?” Lucy looked through the scrapbooks again. “Except…” She hesitated.

  “What?” Noah prompted.

  “There are two distinctly different targets. Those who elevated Rachel’s murder and minimized Camille’s—in the eyes of the Todds—would be Rosemary Weber and any law enforcement involved in either investigation. Then there is Peter. Peter had nothing to do with any of it. He didn’t talk to Rosemary Weber; he didn’t do anything to make himself the center of attention. If anything, he diminished himself and became inconsequential. He moved, changed his name, disappeared. And still, they sought him out.”

  “Or,” Suzanne said, “one of them did.”

  “You’re not thinking that Alexis isn’t part of this whole thing,” Joe said, “or being manipulated by her brother? She attacked a federal agent and shot a civilian.”

  Lucy considered Joe’s comment. “I think Alexis is fully cognizant of her actions. I don’t think she’s being manipulated by her brother. They planned everything out, from Agent Theissen to Rosemary Weber to Tony Presidio to Hans. It’s Peter who doesn’t fit. Especially since Sean says she aimed to kill him, not Peter.”

  “Alexis and Kip could be in the middle of a falling-out,” Noah said. “And we need to capitalize on it.”

  *

  Suzanne and Lucy laid out their theory about Kip and Alexis Todd to Peter. He didn’t say anything for several minutes. Lucy didn’t blame him—it was an incredible story.

  “Why do they hate me? What did I ever do to them?”

  “Nothing,” Lucy said. “You became the object of their sociopathy. When their sister was killed, they had no one to blame. They blamed the police, the media, your family, everyone, because they felt helpless.”

  Suzanne added, “You were a convenient target for them.”

  It was clear that Peter didn’t believe them, not completely.

  “There may be another factor we haven’t uncovered,” Lucy said. “There’s a lot we don’t know about their childhood. There’s a lot we don’t know about their relationship. Detective Mead gave Sean your file, which helps with the time line.”

  Suzanne slid a recent picture of Kip Todd in front of Peter. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Peter stared at it. He shook his head.

  Suzanne then slid a picture of Kip Todd from Peter’s yearbook ten years ago. Kip had changed a lot—his hair was darker and he was heavier in high school.

  “What about him?”

  Peter stared and frowned. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  He shrugged. “I remember a short, pudgy kid when I was a freshman. We didn’t have any classes together, but his locker was near mine. He talked to me a few times, but I didn’t have friends and didn’t want to make any friends.” He looked at them. “My grandmother had just died. My mother was a slut. You’d think after everything that happened, how humiliated they were when their sex parties were exposed, that she’d clean up her act. Instead, my mom goes to one extreme and sleeps with every breathing male, and my dad goes to the other extreme and becomes a fire-and-brimstone-preaching dictator who says sex is evil. I missed my sister, but I missed her even more after Grams died.” He paused, looked at his clasped hands. “Which seems weird after five years.”

  Lucy said, “It’s not weird.” She hesitated, then said, “When I was seven, my best friend—my nephew—was killed. He was practically my brother; we saw each other every day. Like Rachel, he was kidnapped from his bedroom. Senseless. I still miss him, and every once in a while, even now, I feel almost overwhelmed with loss. It comes and goes quickly. On the one hand, I want to hold on to that feeling because I want to remember him; on the other, it feels so real, so painful, I never want to feel it again.”

  Peter seemed to find peace in her understanding.

  Suzanne showed him a recent picture of Alexis. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  “It’s Cami. But different.”

  “But you think it’s the same woman.”

  “I know it is. I loved her. She had lighter hair back then—I knew she’d dyed it, but I never saw her with brown hair. And her features are a little different—maybe fuller? Rounder? But it’s her.”

  “Her name is Alexis Todd Sanchez.”

  He frowned. “She’s married?”

  “Divorced.”

  Lucy considered something. She opened the file and looked
at the birth records of Missy Sanchez. Alexis said she’d just turned four. That meant she could have been conceived in October, right before Alexis left Syracuse after allegedly putting the dead pig in Peter’s bed—Lucy needed Alexis’s medical records to know for certain.

  Or they could call her ex-husband.

  “Excuse me,” Lucy said.

  Suzanne looked at her oddly, but Lucy slipped out.

  Noah and Joe were watching through the one-way mirror in a room next door.

  “What are you thinking?” Noah asked Lucy.

  “The time frame—what if Alexis wasn’t the one who put the pig in Peter’s bed?”

  Noah was skeptical. “She scrubbed down the apartment, lied about where she lived, was never a student. She lied about everything.”

  “They were having sex. I think he’s Missy’s father.”

  “That’s a big leap.”

  “The timing is right.”

  “She’s involved, Lucy. Even if Tony was poisoned in New York, or if his death was truly a coincidence, she attacked Hans.”

  “I think she did both, no doubt in my mind. I think she’s as much involved in all of it as her brother. Except for Peter. I think she truly wanted to warn him, to protect him.”

  “I trust your hunches,” Noah said, “but that doesn’t help us find her, or her brother.”

  “I have an idea to draw Alexis out,” Lucy said. “But I need to confirm my theory.”

  “All right,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “To talk to her ex-husband.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Peter had quietly agreed to the plan when they debriefed him, but Lucy wasn’t at all sure that he was psychologically ready to confront Alexis. She’d been the first person he’d trusted after what happened with his sister, and Alexis had done more than destroy his trust—she’d killed his hope. He’d become a hermit, outside of teaching young kids. He had no friends, no social life, no future.

  Because Alexis and possibly Kip had seen Sean, Sean would be Peter’s visible bodyguard. Alexis also could have seen Sean at Quantico and know that he was involved with Lucy, but they would have to take that chance. Lucy was banking on her psychological analysis that Alexis would come to warn Peter or try to justify what she’d done.